How can a party that can’t run itself hope to run a country?

Of all the sad but ironic sights we have been treated to by our ANC rulers, none is more pathetic, from the people who promised “A better life for all”, than that of its own staff going unpaid for a second straight month.

Yet, even as it was proving it could not manage its own payroll properly, the ANC government was flying a kite about hitting South African taxpayers for 12% of their monthly income to fund a grandiose social safety net.

If these facts were not indisputably true, it would be easy to imagine they came from the script of some dystopian comedy.

Part of the problem, of course, seems to be of its own making. Under intense scrutiny in places like the Zondo commission about the sleazy way the wheels of politics are greased by businesspeople and tenderpreneurs, the ANC introduced legislation to make it compulsory for political parties to declare the identity of
any donor who pledges more than R100,000.

That is no doubt making donors nervous, possibly because they would then be able to be easily linked to doing business with the government.

And there is ample evidence in the Zondo commission and elsewhere of businesses like Bosasa that profited hugely from government work and, in turn, were not shy about financially scratching the ANC’s back, and that of its leaders, in return.

However, judging by how the organisation has had to go, cap in hand, to the Independent Electoral Commission pleading for more time because it had not submitted candidate lists by the deadline, the administration of the ANC itself seems equally as inept as that in most government departments.

If you cannot run your own financial affairs as a governing party, then what hope does your country have of
ever getting out of debt and growing its economy?